Surprise Me

by Kinsella, Sophie

  ‘Surprise,’ he says.

  I follow him in, looking around in wonderment. What is this place? There are raised beds. Trellises. Pleached apple trees. Roses. It’s a little haven in the heart of London. And in the centre of it all is an arrangement of five abstract modern sculptures – all twisting, sinuous, hardwood curves.

  It’s towards these that Dan is leading me, authoritatively, as though he owns the place. Without speaking, he pushes me up against a sculpture and starts to kiss me with determination, peeling off my coat, cupping my naked breasts, not saying a word. The smooth sweep of the sculpture melds to me perfectly. The air is fresh against my skin. I can smell roses in the air; hear the laughter of passers-by on the other side of the wall. They’ve got no idea what we’re up to. This is surreal.

  I want to ask, ‘Where are we?’ and ‘How did you know about this place?’ and ‘Why haven’t we been here before?’ but already Dan is pulling me on to another of the sculptures. He fits my limbs expertly to its curves as though it’s custom-made. For thirty seconds he just stares at me, splayed on the wood, like his own private boudoir shot. A million miles from white suspenders and Prosecco.

  Then he’s stripping off his own clothes, no pausing, no hesitating, no wondering, his face urgent. Businesslike. Serious. Was this sculpture designed for sex? I can’t help wondering. And how does Dan know about it? And what – why …?

  Moments later, I inhale in shock as Dan bodily lifts me on to a third, even more strangely curved sculpture. With firm hands, still not speaking, he manoeuvres me into the weirdest ever … Wait, what does he want me to do? I’m getting head rush. My limbs are twitching in this unfamiliar position. I’ve never known … How did he even think of … If the boudoir shots were ‘soft’, this is full-on, 18-rated …

  I had no idea Dan even …

  Oh God. My thoughts putter out. I can hear my breath coming in short gasps. I’m clutching hard at the wood. I’m going to explode. This isn’t ‘surprise’. This is ‘seismic’.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sated in my life. I’m almost shaky. What was that?

  When we’re finally, finally done, we nestle in the curve of one of the sculptures (they are so designed for sex) and stare up into the sky. There aren’t any stars to speak of – too cloudy – but there’s the floral, earthy scent of the garden and the trickle of a water feature that I didn’t notice before.

  ‘Wow,’ I say at last. ‘Best surprise ever. You win.’

  ‘Well, if you will dress up like a hooker.’ I can sense Dan grinning into the darkness.

  ‘So, what is this place?’ I gesture around with a bare arm. ‘How did you know about it?’

  ‘I just knew about it. It’s great, isn’t it?’

  I nod, feeling my heart rate subside. ‘Amazing.’ I’m still suffused with a rosy glow, with endorphins coursing round my body. (Do I mean pheromones? Sexy loving hormones, anyway.) In fact, I feel pretty euphoric. Finally it’s all worked out! Project Surprise Me has led to this astounding, sublime and transcendental evening which we’ll remember forever. I feel so connected to Dan right now. When’s the last time we lay naked in the fresh night air? We should do this more. All the time.

  How did he know about this place, anyway? I think idly. He didn’t really answer the question.

  I nudge Dan. ‘How exactly did you know about it?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Dan, yawning. ‘Well, in actual fact, I helped to create it.’

  ‘You what?’ I raise myself on an elbow to stare at him.

  ‘During university, the summer after my first year. I volunteered for a while.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s a community garden. They let groups in to study horticulture, herbology, that kind of thing.’

  ‘But … how come? Why a garden?’

  ‘Well,’ Dan says, as though it’s obvious, ‘you know I’m into gardening.’

  I know what?

  ‘No I don’t.’ I peer at him in astonishment. ‘What do you mean, “I’m into gardening”? You’ve never been into gardening. You never garden at home.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Dan makes a regretful face. ‘Too busy with work, I suppose. And the twins. And now our garden’s basically a playground, what with the Wendy houses.’

  ‘Right.’ I pull my coat around my shoulders, digesting this. ‘My husband, the gardener. I never knew.’

  ‘It’s not a big thing.’ Dan shrugs. ‘Maybe I’ll take it up again when I retire.’

  ‘But wait.’ A fresh thought strikes me. ‘How did you know these sculptures were so … fit for purpose?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ says Dan. ‘But I always looked at them and wondered.’ He twinkles at me wickedly. ‘I wondered a lot.’

  ‘Ha.’ I smile back, running an affectionate hand over his shoulder. ‘I wish I’d been your girlfriend back then. But that year …’ I wrinkle my brow, trying to remember. ‘Yes. I was attached.’

  ‘Well, so was I,’ says Dan. ‘And I don’t wish we’d known each other back then. I think we found each other at exactly the right time.’ He kisses me tenderly and I smile absently back. But my brain is snagging on something. He was attached?

  ‘Who were you attached to?’ I ask, puzzled. My mind is already running through the roster of Dan’s previous girlfriends. (I’ve quizzed him quite extensively on this subject.) ‘Charlotte? Amanda?’

  Surely neither of those works, timing-wise?

  ‘Actually, no.’ He stretches, with another huge yawn, then pulls me closer. ‘Does it matter who it was?’

  My mind tussles with two answers. The not-ruining-the-moment answer: no. And the I-have-to-know-this answer: yes.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say at last in a light, breezy tone. ‘I’m not saying it matters. I’m just wondering. Who it was.’

  ‘Mary.’

  He smiles at me and kisses my forehead, but I don’t react. All my internal radar has sprung into action. Mary? Mary?

  ‘Mary?’ I try a little laugh. ‘I don’t remember you mentioning a Mary, ever.’

  ‘I’m sure I told you about her,’ he says easily.

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure I did.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ There’s a hint of steel in my voice. I have all Dan’s former girlfriends logged in my brain, in the same way that FBI agents have America’s Most Wanted. There is not and has never been a Mary. Until now.

  ‘Well, maybe I forgot about her,’ says Dan. ‘To be honest, I’d forgotten about this place. I’d forgotten about that whole part of my life. It was only when you said, “something adventurous” …’ He leans over me again, his eyes mischievous. ‘It woke something up in me.’

  ‘Clearly!’ I say, matching his tone, deciding to leave the issue of Mary. ‘Come on then, give me a tour.’

  As Dan leads me around the paths, gesturing at plants, I’m slightly gobsmacked at his knowledge. I thought I knew Dan inside out. And yet here’s this rich seam of passion which he’s never shared with me.

  I mean, it’s great, because we could definitely do more with our own garden. We can turn it into a family hobby. He can teach the girls to weed … hoe … And presents! Yes! I have to resist a sudden urge to fist-pump. All his presents are solved for the next twenty years! I can buy him gardening tools and plants and all those witty items saying ‘Head Gardener’.

  But I must bone up on gardening myself. As we progress, I’m realizing quite how inexpert I am. I keep thinking he’s talking about a shrub when he’s referring to a climber, or vice versa. (The Latin names really don’t help.)

  ‘Amazing tree,’ I say as we reach the far corner. (I can get ‘tree’ right.)

  ‘That was Mary’s idea.’ Dan’s eyes soften. ‘She had a thing about hawthorn trees.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, forcing a polite smile. This is the third time he’s mentioned Mary. ‘Gorgeous. And that arbour is lovely! I didn’t even notice it at first, tucked away there.’

  ‘Mary and I put that up,’ says Dan reminiscently, patting the wooden
structure. ‘We used reclaimed wood. It took us a whole weekend.’

  ‘Well done, Mary!’ I say sarcastically, before I can stop myself, and Dan turns his head in surprise. ‘I mean … amazing!’

  I link my arm in Dan’s and smile up at him, to cover the fact that all these little mentions of Mary are feeling like pinpricks of irritation. For a woman I’d never even heard about three minutes ago, she seems to be remarkably present in our conversation.

  ‘So, was it serious, you and Mary?’ I can’t help asking.

  Dan nods. ‘It was, for a bit. But she was studying at Manchester, which is why we broke up eventually, I guess.’ He shrugs. ‘Long way from Exeter.’

  They didn’t break up because they had a row or slept with other people, I register silently. It was logistics.

  ‘We had all kinds of dreams,’ Dan continues. ‘We were going to set up a smallholding together. Organic veg, that kind of thing. Change the world. Like I say, it was a different me.’ Dan looks around the garden and shakes his head with a wry smile. ‘Coming in here is strange. It’s taken me back to the person I was then.’

  ‘Were you so different?’ I say, feeling disconcerted again. He’s got a light in his eye I’ve never seen before. Distant and kind of wistful. Wistful for what, exactly? This was supposed to be a sublime and transcendental evening about us, not some long-ago relationship.

  ‘Oh, I was different, all right.’ He laughs. ‘Wait. There might be a picture …’

  He searches for a while on his phone, then holds it out. ‘Here.’ I take it and find myself looking at a website headed The St Philip’s Garden: How We Started.

  ‘See?’ Dan points to a dated-looking photo of young people in jeans, clutching muddy spades and forks. ‘That’s Mary … and that’s me.’

  I’ve seen pictures of Dan in his youth before. But never from this era. He looks so skinny. He’s wearing a checked shirt and some weird bandana round his head and his arm is firmly squeezing Mary. I zoom in and survey her critically. Apart from the frizzy hair, she’s pretty. Really pretty. In a wholesome, organic, dimpled way. Very long, lean legs, I notice. Her smile is radiant and her cheeks are flushed and her jeans are filthy. I can’t imagine her doing a boudoir shoot. But then, I can’t imagine Dan the gardener either.

  ‘I wonder what she’s doing now?’ Dan muses. ‘It’s crazy to think I just forgot about her. I mean, for a while we were—’ He breaks off as though realizing where this is taking him. ‘Anyway.’

  ‘Crazy!’ I say, with a shrill little laugh. ‘Well, here you are. Are you getting cold?’

  I hold his phone out to him, but he doesn’t take it. He’s staring, transfixed, at the arbour. He seems lost in … what? Thought? Memories? Memories of him and Mary, aged nineteen, all lithe and idealistic, building their reclaimed arbour?

  Shagging in the arbour? When everyone else had gone home?

  No. Do not have that thought.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ I say, trying to sound light and carefree, thinking, If he says ‘Mary’, I will …

  ‘Oh.’ Dan comes to and darts an evasive look at me. ‘Nothing. Really. Nothing.’

  TEN

  It woke something up in me.

  I keep recalling Dan’s words, and every time it’s with a sense of foreboding. I can’t stop picturing his transported face. Transported away from me, to some other, golden, halcyon time of scented flowers and honest earthy work and nineteen-year-old girls with radiant smiles and dimples.

  Whatever that secret garden ‘woke up in him’, I would be quite keen on it going back to sleep now, thank you very much. I would be quite keen on him forgetting all about the garden, and Mary and whatever ‘different person’ he was back then. Because, newsflash, this isn’t then, it’s now. He’s not nineteen any more. He’s married and a father. Has he forgotten all that?

  I know I shouldn’t leap to conclusions without evidence. But there is evidence. I know for a fact that in the five days since we visited the garden, Dan has been utterly preoccupied by Mary. Secretly preoccupied with her, I should clarify. On his own. Away from me.

  I’m not a suspicious woman. I’m not. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to glance at my husband’s browsing history. It’s part of the intimate ebb and flow of married life. He sees my used tissues, thrown in the bin – I see the workings of his mind, all there for me to find on his laptop with no attempt at concealment.

  Honestly. You’d think he’d have been more discreet.

  I can’t decide if I’m pleased or not pleased that he didn’t clear his history. On the one hand it could mean he doesn’t have anything to hide. On the other hand it could mean he doesn’t have any sense of women, or any sense of anything, or even a brain, maybe. What did he think? That I wasn’t going to check his laptop after he revealed a secret long-lost girlfriend with dimples whom he’d failed to mention?

  I mean.

  He’s searched for her in various different ways: Mary Holland. Mary Holland job. Mary Holland husband. One might ask: Why does he need to know about Mary Holland’s (as it happens, non-existent) husband? But I’m not going to be so undignified as to bring the subject up. I’m not that needy. I’m not that kind of wife.

  Instead, I deliberately googled one of my old boyfriends – I typed in Matt Quinton flash job big car really sexy – and left my laptop out on the kitchen table. As far as I could tell, Dan didn’t even notice. He is so annoying.

  So then I decided on another tack. I bought a gardening magazine and tried to start a conversation about our garden, and whether we should go for hardy annuals. I persevered for about ten minutes and even used a couple of Latin names, and at the end, Dan said, ‘Hmm, maybe,’ in this absent way.

  Hmm, maybe?

  I thought he loved gardening. I thought that was his undeclared passion. He should have leaped at the chance to talk about hardy annuals.

  And it left a question burning in my mind. A more concerning question. If it wasn’t gardening that he was thinking about so wistfully the other night … what was it?

  I haven’t addressed this. Not directly. I just said, ‘I thought you wanted to garden more, Dan?’ and Dan said, ‘Oh, I do, I do. We should make a plan,’ and went off to send some emails.

  And now, of course, he’s in a filthy mood because it’s the opening ceremony at the hospital this afternoon and he has to take time off work and dress up super-smart and be nice to my mother and basically all the things he hates most in life.

  The girls woke even earlier than usual and begged to play in the garden before school, so Dan and I are sitting in an unusual quietness at breakfast while I tweak my speech about Daddy. I’m lurching between thinking it’s too sentimental, then not sentimental enough. Every time I read it through, I get misty about the eyes, but I’m determined that at the actual event, I am not going to cry. I am going to be a dignified representative of the family.

  It is taking me back, though. Life with Daddy was golden, somehow. Or do I mean gilded? I just remember endless summers and sunshine and being out on the boat and corner tables at restaurants and special ice-cream sundaes for ‘Miss Sylvie’. Daddy’s wink. Daddy’s firm hand holding mine. Daddy putting the world to rights.

  I mean, OK, he had a few forthright political views that I didn’t totally agree with. And he wasn’t wild about being argued with. I remember arriving at his office once as a child with Mummy and witnessing him tearing into some hapless employee. I was so shocked that tears actually sprang into my eyes.

  But Mummy hurried me away and explained that all bosses had to shout at their staff sometimes. And then Daddy joined us and kissed and cuddled me and let me buy two chocolate bars out of the vending machine. Then he took me into a meeting room and told his assembled employees I was going to run the world one day and they all clapped while Daddy lifted my hand up like a champion. It’s one of the best memories of my childhood.

  And as for the shouting – well, everyone loses their temper once in a while. It’s simply a hum
an flaw. And Daddy was such a positive force the rest of the time. Such a jolt of sunshine.

  ‘Dan,’ I say suddenly as I reread my anecdote about Daddy and the golf buggy, ‘let’s go on holiday to Spain next year.’

  ‘Spain?’ He flinches. ‘Why?’

  ‘Back to Los Bosques Antiguos,’ I explain. ‘Or nearby, anyway.’

  There’s no way we could afford to stay at Los Bosques Antiguos. I’ve looked it up – the houses are way out of our league. But we could find a little hotel and go to Los Bosques Antiguos for the day, at least. Wander among the white houses. Dip our feet in the communal lake. Crush the scented pine needles of the neighbouring forest underfoot. Revisit my past.

  ‘Why?’ says Dan again.

  ‘Lots of people go on holiday there,’ I assert.

  ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea.’ His face is closed up and tentery. Of course it is. ‘It’s too hot, too expensive …’

  He’s talking nonsense. It’s only expensive if we stay somewhere expensive.

  ‘Flights to Spain are cheap,’ I retort. ‘We could probably find a campsite. And I could go back to Los Bosques Antiguos. See what it’s like now.’

  ‘I’m just not keen,’ Dan says at length, and I feel sudden fury boiling over.

  ‘What is your problem?’ I yell, and Anna comes hurtling in from the garden.

  ‘Mummy!’ She looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Don’t shout! You’ll scare Dora!’

  I stare at her blankly. Dora? Oh, the bloody snake. Well, I hope I do scare it. I hope it has a heart attack out of fright.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling!’ I say as soothingly as I can. ‘I was just trying to make Daddy understand something. And I got a bit loud. Go and play with your stomp rocket.’

  Anna runs outside again and I pour out more tea. But my words are still hanging in the air, unanswered. What is your problem?

  And of course, deep down, I know what his problem is. We’ll walk among those huge white houses and Dan will see the wealth that I had when I was a child and it’ll somehow spoil everything. Not for me, but for him.